How to get people lining up to buy from you

The magic formula you need to promote your business and create demand for what you've built.

Welcome to the 72 new readers since last post. Truly honoured you are here! Expect my weekly Wednesday posts to help get your business on the straight and narrow and turn your vision to reality.

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We are in the final stretch of the company building newsletter series. Part one was getting clear on your vision, part two on your positioning, now it’s time to shout about your business and create momentum. So if you want the secret to generating a buzz for your business, you are in the right place.

So, fellow business-builders, I’m going to start by hazarding a guess…

You want to be oversubscribed in your business.

You want demand to outstrip supply of your product or service. You want a waitlist of customers ready to buy from you. You want to create a hype, where the message of what you are doing spreads so far and wide that customers can’t wait to hand over their money to work with you.

You would love it if they even promoted your businesses on your behalf so that sales and marketing would take care of itself. Then you could remain focused on your craft and getting really good at whatever got you into business in the first place and servicing your customers.

For many of the entrepreneurs I have coached, the act of promoting their business is the part of their work they enjoy the least. It is often the final piece of the puzzle which is often the hardest to make fit.

Why does no one want to buy!? I hear you cry.

Customers are the lifeblood of any business, it doesn’t matter how beautiful, creative or innovative your fledgling business is if there is no one willing to pay for it. So somehow, you will need to promote it. Because so rarely, do you build it, and they just come.

Why promotion may be the hardest part of business-building

Sales and marketing are both an art and a science. Which is why they allude so many people.

Why is it that some businesses can create customers so loyal they will camp outside their store overnight for new product releases, and others must offer discount after discount until their eventual demise?!

The actual product or service is rarely the deciding factor.

Let’s take the iPhone example, many of us admit they are not the best phone on the market, but we still want them more.

The cycle continues because we want what other people want. But how do you make someone want what you’re selling?

Promotion (done correctly) serves to increase the value of your business in the eyes of your customer as you communicate what it can do for them. Promotion maps their desires onto what you have built, and explains how it will change their emotional, psychical or financial state, for the better.

Sounds simple, but it can be really hard to do this in practice.

Why?

The methods of promotion have become so complicated as trends from both a platform and reach perspective constantly evolve, as do consumer browsing and buying behaviours. The landscape changes almost daily.

From the ubiquity of mobile, increase in data-driven marketing and hyper-targeting, rise of platforms like podcasting, social media platforms and communities to the shift towards Web 3.0… its exhausting to keep up. There have never been more ways with which to reach people.

I didn’t mention offline marketing methods there at all. Let’s not forget those still exist too.

So you, with your new business, small budget and big dreams, where do you start?

Is it best to begin with audience-building first, so that you can sell a product to them later? Or perhaps your strategy is to achieve growth via viral memes? Or establishing partnerships with key industry players?

Having too much choice results in ‘analysis paralysis’, the process of overwhelm that leaves us stagnant. Studies show that having too much choice can mean we are dissatisfied by our final choice, because we imagine all the alternatives we’ve discarded are better.

I see a lot of fear come up in promotion, too.

Fear of expending time, effort and money into channels and platforms that yield no return. Fear of looking stupid or saying the wrong thing, and the fear that you are wasting energy on promotion for the sake of seeking vanity metrics, when you could be pouring that energy back into your creations themselves.

We fear that spending all the time talking about the thing, we are not actually doing the thing.

So what is the right balance?

This question of balance is one I explored in July, as to whether personal brand building was a cost to your business:

How the desire to maintain a personal brand may be harming your business.

The distinction in today’s post, however, is we are now talking about promoting your business generally, so that your business can actually sell the thing that it built. Yet we cannot talk about one without the other, since in today’s world, people no longer want to buy from faceless corporations they want to connect with real people, and so you and your brand are inextricably linked. Which poses its own problems (and opportunities).

Even with a full practice of coaching clients over the last few months I’ve bemoaned how slowly my Instagram account is growing. Because let’s face it, we equate more followers with more success, it felt like a problem to solve.

But whilst building my own brand will serve my business, avoiding the trap of vanity metrics is vital. Retaining focus on what really matters to my customers is the key to being profitable, not just popular. What matters to me is growing this newsletter, to find my people who care and think deeply about the important side of business building.

So, how do you get customers lining up to work with you?

The reality is that you will always be promoting to find people to buy. It’s exhausting when you think about it and it’s no wonder people are tired of promoting themselves or their services when there is so much competition for attention. We have to share the same message so many times to cut through the noise.

However, all this critiquing won’t get me, or you, very far.

The reality is that whilst we will always be promoting, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

You get customers lining up to buy from you by promoting your business in the most authentic way possible.

Authentic, means in a way that is aligned to both your vision, mission and purpose, and how you are wired. Promotion activities that are in line with you and your business’ unique talents so that you can focus on getting really good at doing them and make promotion a core part of your service, and not a chore on top.

Select promotional activities that are true to who you are and what your business does. Choose the activities that sit at the intersection of enjoyment and effectiveness, and your experience of business-building on the whole will improve. Focus your efforts on tasks that bring you mastery, domain knowledge and skills you would like to possess, not on the things you can’t stand. 

Try these examples on for size:

If you’re struggling with SEO and keywords due to the data-driven mindset they require but are a natural communicator and relationship builder, then a podcast may serve you better than a blog.

If you’ve never used Twitter in your life but you’ve spent hours pouring over visual inspo on Pinterest to decorate your house and plan your dream wedding, then choose the platform you know.

If you are somewhat scatty and last minute then running in-person events to gain awareness for your business might not be the best fit, where setting up some automated sales funnels could save you a lot of stress.

With a more focused list of activities not only can you do them better than if you were trying to juggle many things, but you’ll have more time and headspace to put back into your company.

The more time and energy you spend on your product and service, the more raving fans you will create, who will go out and sell on your behalf once they are finished working with you.

So pick one or two promotional activities, and one or two metrics to focus on, and ignore the rest.

And remember that key goal: to be authentic.

Once you’ve picked how to speak to your chosen people (the platforms, mediums, places) then make sure you figure out the what.

Make what you say the truest, most authentic expression of you and your vision that you can master. Your audience needs to hear you speak in terms that will actually resonate with them, and they will respond best to your emotions. Not just by sharing tactics and information, but through building trust (which comes from vulnerability and honesty).

Sure, your message won’t connect with everyone — it shouldn’t if you have strong customer focus — but showing up and sharing a real message will connect with your people. You don’t literally need a line of people queuing up to work with you if you offer an intimate service, you just need to fill your capacity to make your business viable.

To do this properly, not only do you need to express clearly what difference your business can make in their lives, but you need to say it with confidence.

If you don’t feel confident it may be that you have some work to do on getting clear on what your business does. Clarity precedes confidence (this is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my coaching practice) and so you have to start with your getting your foundations straight before you can then go on to flex your confidence muscles.

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Psst. I love workshops.

They bring me energy and joy which is why I bother to do them. Join me and see what the fuss is about next Wednesday for a free workshop for Founders ready to master the startup journey and gain the tools to be their most effective selves. No fluff, only practical takeaways.

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The magic formula to create customers who care

Promotion becomes easy, and flows, when you tick all three boxes:

i) Doing the things that you love
ii) Sharing your truest message authentically
iii) Showing up with confidence.

I diagnose at least one of these issues in nearly every business that isn’t growing, because the Founder needs to change up what they are working on, clarify their vision more clearly, or build more self-trust and confidence.

A recent client, let’s call her Simone, has stopped doing random coffee meetings that drained her and boosted her blog (where she ranks super high on SEO after such a short time writing) and has signed a 6-month contract with her dream client.

Another client is winning awards left right and centre (and receiving interest from investors) since she started showing up more confidently and sharing more of what her business is doing on LinkedIn.

So it is these key ingredients that my coaching programme offers over the course of three months. We look at areas such as values, strengths, goal alignment and messaging. Reviewing whether current activities are working and what mindset shifts might need to happen in order to better ride the rollercoaster of emotions that come up through startup building, keep iterating, and learning what works for them. (Not letting a lack of likes on their Facebook post deter them from ever posting again!)

So if that sounds like something you want to explore, I have one slot left for 2021 and am already securing spaces for January. Apply here. The consultation is free and designed to see if we connect and explore exactly how coaching would look in your life and business.

Here’s what some of my clients this year have had to say about their coaching.

Good luck promoting!

Thanks as always for reading. Next week we’re joined by Daisy from The Selfhood who is the queen when it comes to brand building, marketing and making promotion fun, so stay tuned for her story and d subscribe now to get future posts of The Ask newsletter if you’re new.

👋

Ellen Donnelly, Founder + Chief Coach, The Ask.